By Andrew Warshaw and Paul Nicholson
March 24 – FIFA’s efforts to distance the regime of Gianni Infantino from the previous administration of Sepp Blatter and Jerome Valcke have taken another significant step with both former powerbrokers suffering fresh bans at the hands of the organisation’s ethics apparatus.
March 23 – Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich has launched legal action against the author and publisher of a book which alleges he acted corruptly and bought the club on the direction of Vladimir Putin.
March 22 – Amnesty International has called on FIFA to put more pressure on 2022 World Cup hosts Qatar to improve conditions for migrant workers.
March 22 – UEFA have stepped in to investigate claims that a player from Scottish champions Rangers was racially abused by a Slavia Prague opponent during their Europa League match last week as both sides continue to blame the other for the incident.
March 19 – Scottish champions Rangers, bundled out of the Europa League by Slavia Prague on Thursday, have accused one of the Czech defenders of racist abuse in the latest incident of discrimination to hit the game.
March 17 – Former UEFA president Michel Platini spent six hours in front of a Swiss prosecutor as a suspect on Monday – but today was due to appear as a witness in a separate case against his nemesis, FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
March 16 – The coach of Dinamo Zagreb, who play Tottenham Hotspur in the Europa League on Thursday, has resigned after having a prison sentence for fraud and tax evasion confirmed by Croatia’s supreme court.
March 16 – FIFA has opened disciplinary cases against three Russian footballers for suspected doping violations that happened in 2013.
March 15 – France’s Professional Football League (LFP) has won a legal battle against Canal+ with a French commercial court ruling that the LFP was within its rights to tender only the TV rights abandoned by Mediapro following the collapse of the rights deal with the Spanish-sino agency.
March 12 – After a series of legal losses in his battle against criminal prosecution in Switzerland, FIFA president Gianni Infantino had a win yesterday when the Swiss Federal Criminal Court ruled in favour of one of four complaints Infantino’s legal team had made in December 2020.
March 12 – A major illegal streaming network that had over 100 million downloads of its app and had made profits estimated at €5 million has been shut shutdown following raids by Europol and the Spanish National Police.
By Paul Nicholson
March 11 – Women should not be left out of football’s rebuilding programme and that although positive steps have been taken by men for the women’s game, more can be done. These were two clear messages coming out of the just concluded Female Leadership webinars organised by sports integrity body SIGA.
March 11 – The family of late Argentine footballer Emiliano Sala is taking legal action against English Championship club Cardiff City more than two years after his death in a plane crash.
March 9 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino was struck another legal blow in the criminal case against him in Switzerland with the Swiss Federal Criminal Court ruling he can’t have access to the investigation file into his case.
March 9 – FIFA general secretary Fatma Samoura opened the Female Leadership in Sport Summit yesterday with a message that the world governing body has at its a heart a “mission to transform FIFA into an egalitarian organisation”.